As we're getting close to the end of the window (finally), I have to say I'm pretty pleased with Liverpool's moves. Bringing in Mignolet, Aspas, Alberto, Cissoko, Toure, and potentially Sakho, Iilori, and Moses/Yarmelenko while hanging on to Suarez is some pretty darn good business. They also offloaded a bunch of players who didn't fit the team anymore (Downing, Reina, Shelvey, Spearing, Carroll, etc...). Not sure if they'll be able to reach 4th, it will largely depend on what Arsenal do in the next day or two and if Tottenham can actually blend their 8 million new players into a team, but I think they'll be in the mix all the way until the end. I also expect them to compete heavily for the FA and Capital One Cups.

On an aside, I wonder what Spurs situation will be if Real Madrid decide to all of a sudden hold them over a barrell w/ regard to Bale now that Spurs have gone out and spent over $100 million on the expectation that they'll get at least $80 million for him. It will definitely be an interesting last couple of days.

I was certainly one of those that considered her novels childish and it took my sister almost a year before she convinced me to read them. I finally read Sorcerer Stone when Prisoner of Azakabhan came out and I was hooked. Check out the novels from your local library and stick with them.

That was me too. I avoided them for years simply because I thought they were childish. My wife finally managed to convince me to read them late last year and I finished all 7 in about 3 months. I went in expecting crap, but by the time I finished I would rank them as my 2nd favorite fantasy series of all time, right behind LOTR. They're really amazing books.

You could try Tamriel Immersion Experience. Everything is non-leveled, NPCs and loot, if that's what you're looking for. Just one 3MB .esp so it's no effort to install.

Yeah, TIE may be just what you're looking for. It only uses stock assets, but it completely removes the leveling and really gives the game a Thief-like feel. It's a good deal more difficult but it's a ton of fun, especially if you like playing rogues.

While my statement (clearly just a joke) doesn't exclude the possibility, you've drawn an incorrect conclusion. I merely indicated that Beyonce was both wearing something similar to a one-piece, and secondly that she was grinding like a two-bit whore. Those two elements are only connected in my example through the main subject. I'd draw a Venn diagram, but I don't think it's worth the effort.

My statement was also a joke, based on an intentional and hopefully humorous misreading of your original post .

Being able to catch references to crappy pop-music would indicate I actually listen to that kind of stuff. I don't, and I take pride in that. In my eyes, recognizing the joke above indicates you have a horrible taste in music or live with someone else who does, and neither is something I'd ever want for myself. Yeah I know, I'm a terrible person.

If it wasnt Romo, why did the Cowboys only manage 16 points against the worst scoring and pass defense in the league?

Play calling? They kept try to run the ball (unsuccessfully). When they had a chance to score a TD when close to the goal line late in the game, they only did short passes (like a shuffle pass) which more or less runs. When they had the ball late with a chance to run the clock out, they ran three times, got stopped, and had to punt. And their defense lets the Pats go 80 yards for a TD in two minutes. This one doesn't fall on Romo.

Well, one of the reasons they called those plays was because of how many times Romo has shit the bed in pressure situations. The coaches are understandably a bit gun shy when it comes to putting the ball in his hands at crunch time.

so, anyone watching this to the end? I've caught the first 2 episodes, and I found this from the second episode interesting:

Spoiler for Hiden:

there are no fires for weeks, and as soon as he starts thinking about being unfaithful with the lady with breast cancer all of a sudden they pop up. I'm still thinking one or more of the crew are dead, and this is their purgatory.

just think, in the last episode Tommy looks up at the wall with the plaques of the dead and sees himself and the rest of his crew, as they died during 9-11...

I feel like I watched a different movie everyone else. I really enjoy superhero movies and I'm pretty forgiving of some of the silliness that can go on in them and while I thought the first half of this movie was pretty good, I found the second half to be almost unbearably stupid.

I'll put this in spoilers, just in case:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Things I liked:

The whole first half (up until he starts the rescue mission) - I thought the setup of his character, the training, his performances, etc were all very well done. Though it did feel that a very big scene was cut where the doctor explains to Steve what the procedure actually is. It goes straight from training to "hey, you have a procedure tomorrow" and Steve never asks what or has it explained what he's in for.

I thought they did a great job capturing the spirit of Cpt. America and the era it's set in.

Cpt. America himself - I think the actor did a great job capturing the characters spirit without coming off too cheesy.

Tommy Lee Jones - I forgot how funny he could be. The first half of the movie actually had a number of really funny moments in it.

Things I didn't like (ie: the whole second half)

My main problem is that Hydra and the Red Skull are so incredibly incompetent and their plans so vague that it never feels like there's any real threat. The Hydra "soldiers" make Stormtroopers look like crack shots and Red Skull's plan is to blow up the Eastern Seaboard somehow, using something, in a plane that is dangerous somehow. Sure, he's got some nifty bullets but aside from that it seems like their speciality is designing poorly guarded buildings. There's never once a real demonstration of their power, they never accomplish anything (other then menacing a old Norwegian guy), and it makes the entire second half feel pointless. What were they doing with all those installations? Why were they keeping the prisoners? Why did they want to blow up a bunch of capitals? How would they do that anyway? What was the point of the plane? Why was it so dangerous that it couldn't even be allowed to land at a friendly airbase? None of these questions were answered or even really addressed.

Incredibly stupid action sequences - this goes along with Hydra being braindead. Why would you decide to have a sequence where Capt sneaks into a heavily fortified (theoretically) building and then strap a bright red America shield on his back and have him waltz right by guards who miraculously never even look in his direction? That whole sequence could have been staged so much more effectively. Why does he attack the front door of the facility during the final assault when it's apparently possible to zip line directly into the control room, despite it being "500 feet below ground"? When he's assaulting the front door, why do the flame guys decide to shot around him instead of at him (I know it makes a cool shot, but still...)? Pretty much every major action sequence in the second half of the film has this kind of stupidity in it and it really sapped the fun out of them for me. Like I said, I'm willing to forgive a lot in superhero movies, but this movie just had too much.

Unnecessarily stupid moments - "We've been flying reconnaiscence planes non-stop and they can't find anything at all! Capt America must be KIA! Oh wait, here come 400 guys with trucks and tanks marching up the highway. Guess the planes missed them." Why even have that dialogue in there? It just makes your movie and your characters seem dumb.

The little planes (bombs?) having the city names on them.

The complete lack of development for Capt's team. These guys seem completely wasted. Other then Bucky, they didn't even give them names. In the end, they just seemed like regular soldiers who could drink a lot when I'm guessing they're supposed to be a lot more then that.

There were other things that bothered me as well, but those were definitely the main ones. In the end, what started off as a really good movie completely feel apart in the second half. I'd rate it as the worst of the pre-Avengers movies, by a long shot.

Following on from three arrests in Spain last week, a further 32 suspected Anonymous members have been detained by Turkish authorities.

The individuals were caught after Turkish police carried out raids in 12 of the country's provinces on Monday, the International Business Times reports.

The raids were a response to distributed denial of service attacks the hacking group is suspected of launching on Turkish telecoms regulators last week.

Anonymous - or a splinter group of the hacking collective - is widely thought to have been behind the recent attack on the PlayStation Network.

We have no idea how many Anonymous members there are left, but a backlash following the latest arrests wouldn't surprise us in the slightest. If Anonymous knocked the Spanish police force's website offline because just three of its number were arrested, who knows what it might try next.

zzzzzz... 2 eliminations... commercial/preview does a fakeout like Andrea may go but.... zzzzz.... no more Ometepe. They should have just condensed the last few episodes into one to get to the final 6 taking each other apart. Bring it on!

They did condense them quite a bit. 2 out of the last 3 episodes have been double elimination eps. Can't remember the last time I've seen that on Survivor.

I was really hoping that Grant was gonna backstab him last night.......he's gonna have to do it soon.

I agree, I liked Rob's confidence before, and he always tempered his arrogance with likeability; but now his utter control of his team and his chortling about it is getting a little annoying. I just don't understand why everyone on his team rushes to tell him everything immediately! (although the buddy system is genius)

Because, aside from Grant, he's surrounded himself with people who would never make it to the top 6 on their own and they all know it. Objectively, just looking at their skills, the old Zapatera folks should be destroying Omatepe but instead, because of Rob and his manipulation of the game, they're getting schooled. I mean, you have a marine, a lawyer, whatever Steve is, a firewoman, and an outdoorsman getting rocked by a nursing student, two other girls, a crazy guy, a former NFL player, and Rob. I think they all recognize that their only shot at making it to the end is sticking together for as long as possible and Rob's generalship has just made them all a tighter group then you usually see in Survivor at this point. It's kind of ironic that Zapatera threw a challenge and voted out the only player in Survivor history (Russell) who might have had a shot at breaking up an alliance that tight.

Anyone besides me still watching? Last night was pretty fantastic (if you're a Rob fan at least). A lot of scrambling and a lot of things which I had guessed were talked about, but I definitely hadn't counted on poor Fabio getting sent straight back to Redemption Island (or that they would "reset" the island. Great stuff! I loved my lawyer boy's look of awe as he realized Rob's masterminding had flushed the idol and took out their tribe's best chance to flip things. He looked like he was ready to bow down and kiss Rob's feet or something, it was hilarious. Will be interesting to see if *anyone* can beat Fabio at a duel. If he comes back again, that would be loads of fun.

I'm still watching, I never get sick of Survivor. Thought it was a great episode last night as it had everything you talked about along with a couple gems from Phillip. I didn't think getting rid of Matt would be a good idea at first, but after watching it play out I'm convinced it was a stroke of genius. Rob has now cemented his alliance of 6, killed the biggest flip threat, and completely demoralized the other tribe by flushing their idol and making a play none of them expected.